Shakespearean Thoughts

Do you think that the gnome version is better?

The discovery of truth by feigning, and of what is wisdom and what folly by debacle, is the enter of As You Like It. It is a play of meetings and encounters, of conversations and sets of wit; Orlando versus Jaques, Touchstone versus Corin, Rosalind versus Jaques, Rosalind versus Phoebe, and above all Rosalind versus Orlando.

The whole idea of dramatic character is forever changed by [Hamlet]. Claudius is wonderfully rendered, but is still a guilty tyrant and usurper; Polonius is a garrulous bore, a crafty operator and spymaster, yet a respected statesman; we think we know the type or put together from experience a good idea of it, but no one much like Hamlet ever existed before... To take him as the herald of a new age is neither idolatrous nor hyperbolical... The new mastery is a mastery of the ambiguous, the unexpected, of conflicting evidence and semantic audacity. We are challenged to make sense, even mocked if we fail.

The play sets before us an intricately woven tapestry of high and low characters, of public and private motives, of politics and festivity, of poetry and prose, of history and comedy, of fact and fiction, allowing us to see and hear not only the variegated play world but history itself as a brilliantly polychromatic pageant.

Shakespeare and his contemporaries had no very clear prescription for the kind of work a tragedy ought to be, beyond the simple working assumption that it would be concerned with the death and downfall of the mighty.

Love's Labour's Lost needs no scenery, because its characters hunt renown across a linguistic landscape.

Peace, ho! I bar confusion. 'Tis I must make conclusion Of these most strange events. Here's eight that must take hands To join in Hymen's bands, If truth holds true contents. You and you no cross shall part. You and you are heart in heart. You to his love must accord Or have a woman to your lord. You and you are together As the winter to foul winter. Whiles a wedlock hymn we sing, Feed yourselves with questioning, That reason wonder may diminsh How thus we met, and these things finish.

He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit.

No, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids but the sky changes when they are wives.

Then to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might: "Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"

I pray you,do not fall in love with me, For I am falser than vows made in wine. Besides, I like you not.